Get Religion is a national and global journalism site focusing on how the mainstream press covers religion news in politics, entertainment, business and sports.
Click here if you want to read the dead-tree-pulp Washington Post story about the final show by Oprah Winfrey. Or don’t. It really doesn’t matter, because this story is about a television event — not a signpost event in the development of pop and/or civic religion in American culture. Ditto for this news report in the New York Times.
Yesterday I pointed out the curious manner in which journalists wrote up a study showing that non-believers, Catholics and evangelical Christians have smaller brains than Protestants who don’t claim a “born-again” experience. But at least that study, though having a small sample size, was done by real academics at a real university using typical methods of analysis.
To every thing there is a season, and Religion News Service this week chose to publish an excellent package of stories and sidebars — eight items in all — on the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. (Here and here, Sarah earlier highlighted some of the coverage of the KJV milestone.)
It would be hard to imagine a more apocalyptic battle between synagogue and state than the ballot-box battle that is unfolding in San Francisco over the right of Jews (and anyone else) to circumcise their newborn males. Now the battle is spreading down the left coast to Santa Monica.
OK, so Religion News Service has a provocative story on a provocative study that I’ve seen in a few papers. But the headlines that are running with the story are curious, to say the least.
The Kabbalah Centre has spent more time on tabloid covers than in the daily newspaper. The reasoning is obvious, what with all those fancy celebrities who like to make a big deal about frequenting (or at least occasionally appearing at) the the centre’s worship facility on Robertson Boulevard.
If there is a list of GetReligion’s deadly journalism sins that affect religion coverage, one of the top items has to be this one: Don’t play the God card unless you intend to follow through and offer the reader some facts about the actual role that faith played in the story.
Item 1: A journalist sent me a link to the clip of the Good Morning America show embedded here. Right at the beginning of this scene from a recent episode, the host asserts “A lot of Christians believe today is judgment day.”
Sorry ’bout this, but it’s time for another picky post on religion-beat linguistics. But first, a question about one of the biggest and most important religion trends of the late 20th century.
